by Tim Binding
As if on cue the girls began to turn away from Veronica’s embarrassed contortions, in preparation for their own nocturnal manoeuvres. With their stomachs full of food, their vanity flushed with drink and their limbs loosened by the persuasive decadence of America’s forbidden music, they were ready to lead their escorts to the promised land. Lentsch looked on, mesmerized by the brazen quality of their several embrace, tired of the weary predictability.
Helmut returned and whispered something into Zep’s ear. Drop�ping his hold on Molly, he hurried out of the room, leaving her standing there, discarded and alone. That was Zep all over. When it came to his work, nothing got in his way. The nurse dancing with Wedel nodded in her direction and whispered something uncomplimentary. The two of them laughed out loud. Lentsch made a mental note to see that she was never allowed in again. He wasn’t going to have some nurse from Bremen insult one of his guests, however Teutonic her physique. The music came to a halt. Veron-ica’s dance was over. She had done her best but towards the end hardly anyone had taken any notice. Zep came back, his greatcoat over his arm. Ignoring Molly he stood before Lentsch and said simply, “I have to go.”
“Trouble?” Lentsch asked, not caring whether there was trouble or not.
Zep opened his palms. For a moment conversation ceased as all eyes feil on this young man, in so many ways the epitome of the Occupation. Wedel looked longingly at his new conquest, his prospects fading fast. Zep shook his head and winked.
“You stay here,” he told him. “No reason for everyone’s evening to be spoilt. I’ll drive myself. Teil Albert he need not wait up for me either.”
Molly walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a large glass of brandy. She knew better than to protest. She would simply curl up on the sofa and wait for his return. One of the unwritten rules in the house was that no matter whose girlfriend you were, there was never any question of going upstairs without an escort.
Veronica came over and taking Lentsch’s hand bent down towards her host.
“Was that Turkish enough for you?” she asked. Lentsch knew what was required of him.
“Delightful,” he said.
“Every Little Movement Has A Meaning of its Own,” she told him stupidly, feeling herself slip out of control.
“What?”
“It’s a song, a silly song. ‘Every Little Movement’. I could sing it for you if you like. In private.”
Almost without thinking she slipped his hand inside the loose fold of silk. She held herself still for a moment, letting him feel the weight and hang of her, then took a deep breath.
“I think we can excuse Herbert any more driving duties tonight, don’t you?”
Four
There were three of them coming up the cobbled street, Tommy Ie Coeur, Peter Finn, and the German. Ned stood motionless in the dark doorway and switched off his torch. Two hours earlier the streets had been thick with soldiers, waltzing around the town with beer on their lips and girls on their arms. Now it was half-past twelve, the island suspended once more in the dark waters of the curfew hours, its girls either safely home or stretched out on some requisitioned bed. The German was a big man on his way back to the Soldatenheime and as he stumbled along bawling an incoherent lullaby, one hand draped around Tommy le Coeur’s neck, sparks flew out from under the metal caps of his regulation boots illumi-nating the road beneath him.
Ned watched as the two policemen led the man up the street towards the Old Government House, now a residential club for officers. Tommy and the new recruit were taking good care of their charge and Ned was surprised by their display of concern. He followed at a distance, hugging the other side, his outline hidden by the wall’s deep shadows. Left to himself the man would have crawled back rather than walked, but between them they managed to keep him upright. When they reached the marble steps outside the building they eased him up slowly, pausing on each lip as the man tried to reason with his sense of balance. At the top of the steps they let him go. He stood there, swaying back and forth, confronted by the impossible conundrum of the dark revolving door.
“Straighten him up a bit, Peter,” Ned heard Tommy ask.
Peter grabbed hold of the man’s collar and pulled him upright.
“That better?”
“Just the ticket. Hold still a moment, sunshine.”
Tommy span on his heel and crashed his fist into the man’s mouth.
“That’s for my brother in the Royal Artillery,” he shouted.
The German catapulted backwards, losing his cap as he tumbled over. Drink had anaesthetized his body. He lay in the road and started to laugh.
“Es gefallt mir hier,” he giggled, waving up at his new found friends. “Es gefallt mir.”
“That’s right, you flat-headed piece of shite,” Tommy agreed. “All fall down. Tommy help you up.” He ran down and picked him up. Ned watched as Tommy led the German back up and then hit him again.
“And that’s for my cousin in the Fusiliers.”
The man tried to stand on his feet but he could not. Rolling over he crouched on all fours, panting, looking up to where Tommy stood, arms akimbo.
“You OK, mate?” Tommy called out. He jumped down and made to lead him up once more. Ned stepped out of the darkness.
“Don’t be a bloody fooi, Tommy,” he called across.
Tommy stopped dead, looking not like the policeman he was employed to be, alert and on the lookout, but wary and caught in the act. Seeing Ned standing there he relaxed and propped the German against the wall. There was a blossom of blood on the man’s mouth and underneath his nose. Tommy straightened his own tunic and breathed on the buttons of his sleeve.
“He doesn’t know shit from pudding, the state he’s in,” he told Ned, wiping the row clean. “I’ve been waiting for something like this for two years.”
Ned lay a restraining hand on Tommy’s arm. His tunic was wet and dirty and his breath smelt as if he’d had more than a couple himself that evening.
“No more, Tommy,” he insisted. “Now let’s get him inside and be on our way.”
They half carried him up the steps and pushed him through. He feil face down on the other side and lay there, as still as any corpse. Light from a distant candle fluttered over his grey uniform. They could hear distant voices from inside, singing. They turned and began back down the hill. Ned motioned Peter to walk ahead and check the doors.
“That was a bloody stupid thing to do,” he told Tommy, when the boy was out of hearing. “Showing off in front of him like that.”
Tommy turned and walked backwards for a few steps. “Trust you to spoil the fan,” he complained, holding his fist underneath Ned’s nose. “That’s real German blood there.” He raised his hand to his mouth, licked his knuckles and then dipped his hand into his side pocket. “Look,” he said, giggling, “got his wallet too.”
“What?”
“Pigskin, by the feel of it.”
Ned was amazed.
“Hand it over, Tommy.”
Tommy held it out with an ill grace. Taking it Ned flipped it open and shone his torch in. Artillery. Pay and Identity Book belonging to one Lieutenant Schade. Behind it a thick wad of banknotes. He ruffled them with his fingers.
“Must be the best part of a couple of months’ pay here. If not more. And you thought you help yourself, I suppose.”
“He wouldn’t know. He’d just think he’d lost it.”
“Tommy, Tommy.”
“They’re the enemy, Ned. That lot could come in handy one day.” Tommy reached over and tapped it. “And anyway, what if he had the invasion plans tucked up in there?”
Ned swung it away from him. “Don’t give me that. You did this for gain, not King and country.”
“So?”
“It’s called theft, Tommy. It’s against the law.”
Tommy was petulant. “They steal from us.”
“We’re not them, Tommy.” He waved the wallet in the air. “I’ll hand it in to the Feldkommandantur in the morning. Teil
them you found it lying in the street. They’ll probably give you a medal for honesty. That would make a change, wouldn’t it?”
Tommy said nothing.
“All right?”
Tommy put his hand to his heimet. “Anything you say. Inspector.”
Ned ignored the gibe. “Right,” he said briskly. “Let’s get back, then.”
They walked back in silence. He shouldn’t have said that. Honesty was not a word to be flung about in front of the men, not after last year. It was a form of blasphemy, like swearing in front of a nun. Last year half the police force had been arrested and charged with larceny. Eighteen men; constables, sergeants, their inspector: the Germans had been watching them all for weeks. Under cover of their night patrols they’d been breaking into the food stores and lifting whatever they could carry out. Civilian or military, it made no difference to them. Ned’s predecessor, Inspector Petty, had given them a helping hand with the heavier items, loading up the old police car, the Yellow Peril, with sacks of rice and flour. When Ned had been a youngster it had been one of the seven wonders of the world, Guernsey’s police car, dressed in its loud yellow coat, as noisy as a Weymouth dodgem and only half as manoeuvrable. Now it was a blaring reminder of the forces’ blatant corruption and, though Ned was not touched by the scandal, he hardly dared use it. When the Germans had carried out the raid that night—on the station and the policemen’s homes—they had found mountains of the stuff, tucked up chimneys, stuffed under floorboards, even buried in the trench next to the shithouse. If they had served no other purpose, the arrests had brought home to all the futility of concealment, even though it was a game most people continued to practise, including Ned himself. There was only the chimney and the floorboard and the trench next to the shithouse. There was nowhere original to hide anything. Too bloody small, that was the trouble with Guernsey.
If it hadn’t been for that debacle, Major Lentsch would never have summoned Ned into his office that February morning and told him that as a serving CID officer on the mainland he was, as of 1 April 1942, to take charge of Guernsey’s decimated force.
“But I’ve never worked here,” Ned had protested. “The men don’t know me. They won’t trust me.”
“Just as long as you don’t trust them. Yet,” the Major had said. “There are more rotten ones in there, I am sure. The ones we didn’t catch. Get rid of them and perhaps in time you will turn it into something we might be proud of. Proper policemen again.”
The promise of complicity in that statement did not escape him. He took the job reluctantly. Like every other able-bodied man he needed the work and he hadn’t had a permanent job since the invasion, just the occasional grave-digging assignment, and a couple of months stoking furnaces at the electricity plant. But it was true. They weren’t policemen any more. They were more like railway porters, or AA patrols, fetching and carrying, saluting passing badges, at anybody’s beek and call. They had lost all dignity. The islanders looked at them with a stare of undisguised contempt, not for getting caught, but for vacating the moral ground to the enemy. They had been stealing rations, food destined for ordinary men and women, food meagre portions of which they had to queue for in the cold and wet; bread, salt, tea; the stuff of ordinary life. They had even been stealing from the Todt stores for the foreigns, and though no one wanted to acknowledge it everyone knew what was happening to those poor bastards. Ned remembered walking up George Street one morning and seeing one of the whores leaning out of the top storey with a tin can dangling on the end of a piece of string. Two windows away, in the hostel, an old man was hanging over the window sill, his hands outstretched. She was fat and pasty. He was brown, with no flesh on him at all. The woman swung the can to and fro so that it might gain momentum. Backwards and forwards it went, higher and higher, until the man reached out and caught it. The woman dropped the string and the man disappeared inside. Looking across she caught Ned’s question-ing look and, holding an imaginary spoon, made a hurried feeding motion with her hand. Ned had hung his head and walked on.
That was all a man could do, all his skulking dignity would allow under the circumstances—to hang one’s head and walk on.
Ned left the police station at about half one. Rather than take the spare bicycle he decided to walk home. It would take him a little over an hour to walk over to Cobo and Mum and Dad’s house, half a mile away from the bay, once one of the most popular spots on the island, now stripped to a bare and uneasy beauty with only creaking coils of barbed wire for company. Despite the cold he had plenty to think about. The letter lay in his jacket pocket. Must see you. Sunday morning, 11 o’clock. Usual place. Must see you. That was all. The usual place had been by the fountain in the water lanes. Did she want to start up again? Or was this police business? Surely she didn’t want to inform on anyone? Not Isobel. He had half a mind to walk over there and confront her with it now. It wasn’t much out of his way.
He was standing outside the darkened house almost before he knew it. There was no point in him being there, it was far too late to go knocking on doors, but he stood there nevertheless, fingering the note, looking up to where he knew she would be sleeping. The blinds were down at every window, all except the drawing room and the bar at the bay window, the stools empty, the glasses still and polished, a decoration of despair illuminated by the moon. He stood by the gate, edging imperceptibly onto the path. He won-dered whether she still left the key under the stone frog by the door, wondered who else she’d left it for since last he had lifted the base and picked it out from the scuttling beetles, wondered if Lentsch had ever brushed his hand thus.
“Can I help you at all?”
Ned span round. Mr van Dielen stood directly across the narrow road, by the gate of the bungalow opposite. Behind him Ned caught sight of a large bulky figure closing the glass-panelled door.
“Mr van Dielen.” He tried not to sound surprised.
“Mr Luscombe, is it not? Or should I say Inspector Luscombe.”
“Whatever, there’s no need to be alarmed.”
“Alarmed? Indeed not. No. I am not…alarmed.”
Van Dielen moved across the road in short sharp steps. Ned edged back to give the man access to his own property. He experienced the same feeling as he had felt that earlier time, embarrassed, a boy caught raiding an apple orchard.
“Quite an elevation since we last met,” van Dielen observed, taking out a large key and rubbing it with a handkerchief. “From young man leasing unroadworthy pushbikes to young man mas-querading as chief of Guernsey’s police. Ah, the fortunes of war, Mr Luscombe. They cannot be all bad.”
He stood on the brick step holding the key to the light. He was the same height as Ned now.
“I was a policeman even then,” Ned told him. Van Dielen sniffed.
“Hmm. If I’d known that I might have been—”
“Think nothing of it,” Ned broke in.
“Even angrier.” Van Dielen said it lightly, an observation made for his own amusement. “And now you are here to take your revenge. A civilian snared after curfew, apprehended in the black-out. Though I doubt if my host will welcome the complaint.” He looked back. There seemed to be a dull flickering coming from behind the bungalow’s curtains. “Major Ernst,” van Dielen told him. “In charge of all the foreign labour. You know him?”
“Not at all.”
“An excellent man. A great organizer and a good host. He likes a job well done. He believes in…progress.” He patted his coat and breathed in the night air. Ned could smell the brandy on his breath. “He has his own film projector, you know. Nature films. All perfectly decent, mind, just not my cup of tea.” He stopped quickly, anxious to divert attention from his indiscretion. “So I’m not under arrest, then?”
Ned obliged. He did not want to be questioned too closely either.
“Not at all, Mr van Dielen. Crossing the road isn’t a crime.”
Van Dielen smacked his lips.
“Ah, but that’s exactly what it is at this time of
night, Mr Luscombe. A crime. By rights I should be found guilty and fined appropriately. This is an island of fines. A fine for crossing the road after eleven at night, a fine for not finishing the job on time, even, I am happy to report, a fine for unauthorized swimming in the sea. A great advancement from the days of old, wouldn’t you say?”
“Some rules are less important than others, Mr van Dielen. I’m not after to fine you for anything.”
“Are you not?” He peered up and down the road. “Then what, by the grace of all that’s straight and narrow, are you doing here? Is this one of your authorized smuggling routes?”
“I was on my way home and I saw a light on. Or thought I did.”
“A light, you say? It is not there now.”
“No.”
“So it went off, like a signal perhaps? And yet, the house is dark, the blinds are all drawn.”
“Perhaps it was just a trick of the light.”
“A trick of light? I suppose a light could do nothing else but its own trick, Mr Luscombe.”
“I might have imagined it.”
“Perhaps you imagined a daughter under it too.”
“I was just checking, Mr van Dielen.”
“How very intriguing, Mr Luscombe, how very lame and how very like yourself to be sticking your spoke in where it does not belong, as you might say.” He twirled the key in his hand. “Isobel went to a party this evening. If she is back,” he pointed to the grey, lifeless window, “she is asleep. It has been a mercirul long time since she last laid eyes on your constabuleric form and long may it remain so.” He raised his hat. “Goodnight, Mr Luscombe.”
He disappeared up the overgrown path. Ned moved on. He wanted to be home now, away from this empty world, in bed with his curtains drawn and the sky blotted out and sleep dulling his sense of impotence. He wanted to run, to hear the rhythm of his own breath in the air, hear his feet pounding along the road, but it was a foolish man who ran along Guernsey’s curfewed streets. Halfway down the Rohais Road he heard a car steaming towards him. He hurried along looking for a place to shelter. This was the hour of the black-market run, goods ferried in from the harbour or any one of the hidden bays to the south, brought in under organized eyes, stored in cellars and attics and army barracks. It would be well for him to stand in the shadow unobserved and let it pass, noting the vehicle and who might be driving. It was part of the lifeblood of the island now, strong and close, like the corrupt branch of an extended family, ready to embroil its relations in its fierce and unpredictable excesses. It could never be eradicated, not now that they were beginning to feel the pinch too. His mum’s Staffordshire White, Sally, had been stolen months back, her throat slit not thirty yards from the back door. Three pairs of hobnailed boots were all they found, or rather the bloody prints of them, dried hard in the mud and leading across the fields. They all knew what that meant. Soldiers. He had complained about it in his monthly meeting with the Feldkommandantur. Lentsch had promised to get to the bottom of it. He had heard nothing since.